Augmented Electricity

Inspiration

We observed that data visualized in 3D can reveal interesting patterns that are not visible numerically.

What it does

This project is an interactive Augmented Reality experience that displays predicted power demand versus actual power demanded in the Northeast region. The height of the states represents the percentage difference from the predicted power consumption as calculated by a regulating authority.

How we built it

Vuforia, Unity, C#, Xcode(to iOS)

Challenges we ran into

Conflicts between the Windows and OSX versions of our project in Unity. We realized that XCode and its associated environment is the most obnoxious application to work with ever.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The Interactivity of the application and the ability to explore the data over time is something that we believe is very valuable to the end user. We don't see this as something that will replace a traditional computer terminal anytime soon, but it shows an application of how data can be easily understood if visualized properly.

What we learned

Android Studio is picky; XCode is tricky.

What's next for Augmented Electricity

Some ideas for the future include transparent radar, cloud cover, temperature, transportation layers, data at a finer level, visualization of power plants and distribution networks.

Built With

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I worked on cleaning data from the provided excel file, and wrote part of the CSV reading script while learning C#. I wrestled Unity into submission and exported the project to Xcode where I troubleshooted for a while before finally loading the project onto my phone.

I created data visualization tools using Unity and Vuforia. This involved extruding SVG outlines of New England states in Blender, animating their height and color in Unity, creating a simple user interface with which the user can control the date and time at which the data is viewed, and reading the data itself through CSV files.

I looked through all of the datasets, and based on my preliminary visualizations in Excel, selected and formatted the electricity demand data that we ended up using. I then handed this data off to Peter, who parsed it in C# to be readable by Unity.